Money Point's mission from the very beginning has always been to provide financial happiness.
Capital follows value. If you have value, you'll be able to find capital in a relatively easier manner.
For me personally, it's a small thing that wanted me to work hard and do some of the things that eventually did in life. It's a simple thing. I was trying to escape heat.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Maya Widu. I run a platform called Culture Custodian, and I do this show on YouTube called Overnight Success, where I talk to overnight successes around their journeys and all the things that happen on the way to them becoming who they are. So thank you for agreeing to do this today.
So I want us to go back to like where it all started. So this is young Tosin in Ibadan, the first of three children growing up at home. What was that like? How did your parents teach you the lessons that informed who you are today?
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Thank you very much. So I mean, just like everyone else, you know, I grew up in a middle-class family. My mom was a teacher. My dad is a contractor. And I think I've said this story many times. For me personally, one of the things that wanted me to, it's a small thing that wanted me to, you know, work hard and do some of the things that eventually did I'm doing in life. It's a simple thing. I was trying to escape heat.
Um, I just didn't like sleeping at night, and there's a lot of heat where you're sleeping, and I dreamt of being able to sleep in AC. And growing up, saw my dad, you know, being a student impacted me, you know, trying to also read. He studied electrical electronics, so I used to read some of his books, and also, you know, I began to, you know, build electronic systems and better systems. Got in a fair. So I mean, growing up was one in which, you know, regular life, just like everybody else, but I just had the desire to always build, build. So you could say there's a nature part and there's a natural part.
Okay. So I want to focus on that. So that's the builder's mindset. So when I was preparing for this, one of the things I read was that when you were a kid, you used to build your own toys, and when you were in UI, you started work building software, and to go like obviously from Interswitch to TeamApt and Money Point. Where does this philosophy of finding value in creating solutions, where does it come from?
I think there's a part of nature, there's a part of nature, and I think there's a part of it that I would say maybe I found myself that way, like just being restless and trying to build things. And there's a part of nurture. Part of it is what I've said about, you know, of course growing up, you know, my father was a builder, a bit of a builder. Then coming also to FUTA, and FUTA being a school that teaches you to, you know, build something aside from your academics, and then over time some of the people that also impacted in me. So there's a part of it that's nature, there's a part of it that is natural.
Okay. One thing I want to focus on now is coming to FUTA. So all the people who are, a lot of the people who are sitting in this hall, you've lived the experience, you've sat down, you've been anxious about what like, you know, your life was going to be. For young Tosin in FUTA, how impactful was this school in shaping who you've become?
I actually remember when I finished my last exams, I sat down in the White House, that there's that bridge when you're just going on the White House connecting the two sides of the building. And I was talking with my friend about what life after school will look like, you know, the uncertainties of, you know, what school look like. I mean, okay, we're done with school because school is a bit of a, can be a bit of a, it's a microcosm of the larger environment, but it also has a bit of insulation of what the real world looks like. Now, you now have full real responsibilities, and obviously many of us went later in life to do different things. But you know, all you can just do is to make sure that you equip yourself with what the real world needs. The real world generally needs skills that can be productive. And the foundation that we all get from school is a starting point for that. And the more you have equipped yourself with the sellable skills, sales, marketing, you know, engineering, everything, the more you are much more valuable in the real world. For example, the way I got my job, my first job in Interswitch, was through a referral from somebody that I did some work with while I was in school, who knew of what I could do, and the person simply referred me into the organization then, and I got an interview. So.
Okay. So in 2015, you'd been working at Interswitch, and you decided that, you know what, I'm going to start my own thing, and that is something that requires a lot of audacity, particularly looking at it in the context of what you have done. But what I want to understand is when you made that decision, where was your mind at? What were the things that made you restless, that made you feel like, you know, you had to go and create this thing? And I mean, there's also the point of like the security. So it's like you working at Interswitch, which is one of the most iconic tech companies in the country. You could have stayed there for a long time and...
And this is by all means not saying that anybody should form their own company. Where I don't, I don't think it's the thing for everybody to do. If you want to do it, go ahead and do it. But Tosin is one of the few statistics. The general people don't succeed, or at least don't get out of breakout.
And for me, I was naive enough to do that because one, like I mentioned, while I was in school, I'd always dreamt that I was going to do that because I, like I said, loved building, and I was looking for something that you build will make impact and will make money at the same time. So after doing about five or so years in Interswitch, I was at the marriage age. I was about, I was ready to be married, and I was worried that if I don't do anything now, it become even harder once you're married and you have full responsibilities.
Did someone give you that speech?
So, and I reasoned to myself that, you know what, let me just start something. Worst case scenario, it fails. If it fails, it's still valuable experience that I can take back to my next employer. And I mean, and yeah, that's why it happened.
So Money Point today is significantly different from what it started as. So what it started as was a B2B service provider, and now it's a full-service banking and payments platform. Cliff notes: what were the things that informed those changes, and what's in terms of how the company has evolved, what are the things that you look at has been very key in terms of shaping your vision for it.
So Money Point's mission from the very beginning has always been to provide financial happiness, and the reason for this mission is because I kind of feel like the most universal thing to everybody is good feelings, aka what, you know, philosophers will call happiness. And whether we like it or not, money is a big participant in that happiness. And if we can find a way to make technology make people find happiness, it's a worthy goal to use your life as.
So when we were as TeamApt building software solutions for banks, I kind of struggled with that because it's almost like you are helping the institutions to get there, but I can't say that banks are the biggest, you know, symbol for providing financial happiness. So, but we're giving them, you know, software solutions and all that. And a couple of incidents happened where, you know, we were struggling because, you know, the business was not moving as fast as we would love because of the way the banks will operate. And then we decided to say, you know what, let's go directly to customers. So, and the transition was relatively easier because we're already building solutions that banks were using for their customers. So it was about repurposing it for ourselves, for the customers. And within, you know, our mission of helping people find financial happiness is the best. We recently hit a 100,000 active loan target yesterday, which means small businesses, 100,000 businesses are now on Money Point loans today, active loans. And this to us, we want to get to 200,000, want to go to a million, and to us this is one of the best impact that we can give to the society.
Okay. So I think anyone who understands Money Point knows that one of your strongest strengths is the fact that you do a lot of work for informal businesses, for small businesses. What does that mean to you?
It means the world to me, my brother. Like, it's, I'm passionate about it because I feel like that is the mainstay of the economy. It's the engine of growth in every country. The small businesses turning over, say, 100,000 a day, 10,000 a day, 1 million a day, having one or no employees, having a family, but, you know, selling things, giving services to businesses, that's the bulk of the employer of labor in this country. And for a very long time, they've been underserved, mostly because of distribution and access, and also some of the requirements than this, the endemic financial institutions we have of them. So by bringing up Money Point, which is a solution that gives them, solves the distribution problem, allows them to access in a way in the convenience of their locality and neighborhood, and is built for informal businesses, I, um, like this is something that is worthy of one's life work, and something that everybody in Money Point is proud to be working on every day.
